She’s Crafty

Things started well enough in our cheap, crappy apartment, but after about a month things got lame when my roommate started staying at her boyfriend’s place. You’d think having the place to myself would be great, but it was a little annoying. She’d come back long enough to tear the hell out of kitchen, leave her wet clothes in the washer, the kitchen table piled with her “crafts” of smelly glue-y yarn things, etc. I’d have to call her mobile repeatedly, leave messages to remind her rent was due on the first and demand she clean up her messes. I succeeded some of the time, but mostly she just ignored me, so I just gave up after a couple months of paying late rent fees and started looking for a new place.

The guys next door were pothead losers and usually kept to themselves. One time, when I walked by their door, they all came out, cat-calling, saying things like how I “sounded like a good time in the sack.” I was confused and pretty freaked out, so I reported them to the landlord. My roommate just happened to be there while I was talking to my mom on the phone about it and she started laughing and admitted that whenever she knew I wouldn’t be home, she and her boyfriend would come and have really loud sex in the living room and they liked how the guys could hear and would pound on the common wall. My roommate and her boyfriend were too chickenshit to do at his apartment, so they did it at mine. And then she had the gall to tell me that they always had sex on my cool rug.

The final straw was after the last time her mom came to visit late at night. Her mom was an alcoholic who would drink until she’d fight with her boyfriend, then walk miles to our place, barefoot and try to break into her daughter’s bedroom window to spend the night. This time she tried to break in I was asleep and I freaked out just like I did the other times, because I was all by myself and thought that I was going to be raped and murdered. After the initial panic let off and realized it was her again, I opened the window and let her into her daughter’s bedroom.

As I was walking back to my room to sleep, I could hear her complain about the state and smell of her daughter’s room and then she let out a blood-curdling scream. Apparently, the ceiling was leaking and instead of telling anyone about it, my roommate just stuck a large stockpot on her bed to catch the drip and left. By the time her mother threw herself on her bed, a week or so had passed. The pot was full of freezing water that dumped over and soaked the entire room and sobered her mom right up. Because of the damages, I never got my deposit back (I paid the entire deposit because she couldn’t afford it), but I was able to move out after the year lease expired.